Good News on Global Warming!!!

It's Getting Hot in Herre

Dear Leader is "solving" the problem of global warming. Huzzzzah! From a puff-piece interview with People Magazine on President Bush celebrating his 60th birthday (but really, aren't all interviews with Dear Leader puff pieces?):

Do you think Gore is right on global warming?
I think we have a problem on global warming. I think there is a debate about whether it's caused by mankind or whether it's caused naturally, but it's a worthy debate. It's a debate, actually, that I'm in the process of solving by advancing new technologies, burning coal cleanly in electric plants, or promoting hydrogen-powered automobiles, or advancing ethanol as an alternative to gasoline.

ThinkProgress points us to MyDD blogger Matt Stoller, who's not celebrating Dear Leader's pronouncement with the vigor that is expected:

Wow. Where to start. First of all, that mankind is responsible for global warming is fairly well understood. How responsible is not clear, but then, it's a tactic of both the deniers and the apologists to doubt-monger, even when the doubt has moved away from healthy skepticism and towards the nihilistic immaturity best expressed by a 14 year old rebelling against her parents. And Bush is certainly doubt-mongering.

But that's not all, because he's also casting himself as the hero of the story. You see, he's also personally solving the problem of global warming by advancing new technologies like hydrogen cars. The 'new technology' argument is something that we've seen other bad faith actors use, like apologist Robert Samuelson in his claim that we are helpless without engineering breakthroughs. There are two things to understand about the argument. One, technology is the result of policy decisions, and technology is not magic. If you don't make policy decisions that encourage the development and deployment of carbon reducing technology, it's not going to be developed and deployed.

But let's get back to the issue at hand, which is neither the stupidity of Bush's statements or the dishonesty of his arguments. It's that there is a rhetorical set of tricks that the global warming deniers and apologists use to prevent the American people from activating the political system.

Shorter Bush on global warming: There's no problem, really, and it's not our fault if there is a problem, and don't worry, the non-problem is being taken care of by magic ponies.

Once again, if you like the Iraq war, you'll just love inaction on global warming.